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Passage of ‘One Big Beautiful Bill’ Renders Republican Deficit Hawks Extinct

Posted on by Alyssa Brown

Republicans have sent their “One Big Beautiful Bill” to President Trump’s desk and it’s hard to overstate the consequences. Not only will the bill be one of the most regressive transfers of wealth from society’s poorest to its richest in recent memory, but it will also add trillions of dollars to our national debt and hurt our economy. By passing this obscene budget-busting bill with near-unanimous support from their members in Congress, Republicans have proven that their party’s deficit hawks have gone extinct.

According to analysis from the Yale Budget Lab, the bill’s deep cuts to safety-net programs such as SNAP and Medicaid will reduce annual incomes for the bottom 20% of Americans by roughly $700 per person. But the savings from these cuts won’t be used to pay down the national debt or improve the programs for the people who need them most — rather, they will help offset tax cuts that will increase average after-tax incomes for individuals in the top 1% by roughly $30,000. The bill also guts pro-growth investments in the clean energy transition while propping up coal production and other conservative special interests with new giveaways, such as expansive new aid for wealthy farmers and large tax deductions for whaling boats.

Despite the bill’s large cuts, it would add roughly $4.1 trillion to the national debt over the next ten years.  Moreover, if ostensibly “temporary” policies in the bill are eventually made permanent without offset — as Republicans have made clear they had no trouble doing when writing this bill— the cost would swell to $5.5 trillion, making it more expensive than every COVID stimulus bill combined. This is not only the most expensive bill ever passed using the filibuster-proof reconciliation process, it is also the first one to permanently increase budget deficits outside the 10-year window. This unprecedented outcome was only possible because Senate Republicans effectively invoked the “nuclear option” to blow up budget enforcement mechanisms, which will open the floodgates for future Congresses to add trillions more to the national debt with barebones majorities.

The explosion of federal debt will have lasting consequences for Americans. In the short term, deficit spending by the federal government will increase by up to $632 billion in a single year, putting upward pressure on inflation rates that have remained stubbornly above the Federal Reserve’s 2% target. Increased government borrowing will also put upward pressure on already elevated interest rates, making everything from mortgages to car loans more expensive for ordinary families. Over the long term, higher rates will make it more expensive for businesses to finance new investments, slowing innovation and job creation. The federal government already spends roughly a trillion dollars each year on interest payments – more than it spends on national defense or Medicare. Now those costs will grow even faster, putting them on track to rival Social Security as the single-largest line item in the federal budget within 20 years. Instead of being used to fund investments in America’s future, taxpayer dollars will be almost exclusively used to pay for previous obligations.

Perhaps what is most remarkable is that this massive assault on our country’s fiscal integrity was only made possible by the people pretending to be its loudest defenders. For years, self-identified “deficit hawks” in the House GOP conference repeatedly called the deficit an “existential threat.” And even though they relied on completely fake growth assumptions to argue that $2.5 trillion of tax cuts would pay for themselves, these representatives insisted they would not support legislation that included any additional tax cuts without offset. They went so far as to get a commitment from House Speaker Mike Johnson that he would step down if he passed a bill that crossed this red line. Yet when the Senate sent them a bill that blatantly violated their agreement, these “fiscal hawks” quickly folded under pressure and rubber-stamped it.

Compare that to what happened just four years ago under the Biden administration. President Biden’s full “Build Back Better” agenda, while no model of fiscal responsibility, would have added less than $3 trillion to budget deficits over the first 10 years if it had been permanently enacted. Even though they used budget gimmicks to do it, Democratic deficit hawks in the House ensured the reconciliation bill advancing this agenda was scored as roughly deficit-neutral under traditional accounting. And when Democratic deficit hawks in the Senate forced party leaders to strip out those gimmicks, the bill eventually became something that actually reduced deficits. While deficit hawks may be endangered within the Congressional Democratic Party, today it is clear they are functionally extinct on the Republican side.

Deeper Dive: 

Fiscal Fact: 

As President Trump’s chaotic and destructive economic policies have shaken investor confidence in the first half of 2025, the U.S. dollar has lost over 10% of its value relative to foreign currencies — the worst such decline in more than 50 years. A weaker dollar results in more expensive imports, lower spending power when traveling internationally, and higher borrowing costs for both the American people and their government.

Other Fiscal News:

More from PPI and the Center for Funding America’s Future:

Senate Republicans Go Nuclear to Blow Up the National Debt

Posted on by Alyssa Brown

Senate Republicans on Monday took the dangerous step of “going nuclear” to pass their One Big Beautiful Bill in violation of the rules governing the filibuster-proof reconciliation process — and the fallout will add trillions of dollars to the national debt.

The reconciliation process, which was designed to fast-track policies needed to help Congress hit its budget targets, does not allow lawmakers to increase deficits outside the 10-year scoring window. These rules have always been enforced by measuring how enacting provisions in the legislation would affect the federal budget relative to a “current law baseline,” which is a scenario defined in statute and generally assumes laws are left unchanged. Senate rules require 60 votes to waive this restriction. 

Republicans couldn’t find a politically palatable way to pay for the trillions of dollars in tax cuts they wanted to make permanent, so they instead decided to make those tax cuts appear free by scoring against a “current policy” baseline, which assumes every policy in effect today is extended in perpetuity — even if the law as written would have them expire. But it gets worse: to enact new tax cuts without paying for them, Senate Republicans scheduled those provisions to expire within the 10-year window and scored them as temporary. The result is a Frankenstein scorekeeping system in which no consistent accounting is used, and legislation is assumed to cost whatever the majority wishes it did. 

While the Senate GOP’s “official” score of the bill using this Frankenstein accounting shows they would reduce deficits, traditional scoring against the current law baseline would show it adding more than $4 trillion to the deficit over 10 years (including higher interest payments) — and the cost would swell to $5.5 trillion if all the “temporary” provisions were made permanent. Notably, if the bill were measured in a way that treated the scheduled expirations of both new and existing policies consistently, it would violate the rules of reconciliation by permanently increasing deficits relative to either a current policy or a current law baseline. 

The Senate’s parliamentarian, who is responsible for interpreting the chamber’s rules, almost certainly would rule against the GOP’s attempt to use their Frankenstein score for enforcement purposes. Any effort to circumvent the parliamentarian’s official interpretation of the rules – whether by firing her, overruling her, or formally changing the 60-vote supermajority requirement with just 51 votes — would be invoking a “nuclear option” that fundamentally changes the character of the Senate. 

Senate Republicans insist they found an alternative to going nuclear by asserting the Senate Budget Committee chairman has unilateral authority to determine scores — something they argue Senate Democrats did in their 2022 budget resolution. But the two situations are not remotely the same: Senate Democrats used their authority to consistently assume discretionary spending for both the IRS and Head Start continued at baseline levels, when the original CBO score was inconsistent. Moreover, Democrats made sure the move was blessed by the parliamentarian ahead of time, whereas Republicans actively prevented the parliamentarian from making any ruling. 

The fact that Republicans prevented the parliamentarian from weighing in before voting to break their own rules with a simple majority vote, rather than overruling her directly, is a distinction without a difference. Republicans have gone nuclear with their chicanery and destroyed the Senate’s budget enforcement mechanisms.

The fallout will radiate throughout fiscal policy for years to come. Not only will the national debt be up to $5.5 trillion larger 10 years from now than it would be without the “One Big Beautiful Bill,” but there will be little to stop future Congresses from doing the same thing that Republicans did this week: adding trillions more to the debt while claiming they are doing the opposite.

The U.S. Needs 8,000 Tons of Cobalt a Year, and Produces 300 Tons

Posted on by Alex Terr

FACT: The U.S. needs 8,000 tons of cobalt a year, and produces 300 tons.

THE NUMBERS: Cobalt reserves known as of 2024, worldwide* –

World 11.00 million tons
Democratic Republic of Congo   6.00 million tons
United States   0.07 million tons
All other countries   5.30 million tons

* U.S. Geological Survey, Mineral Commodity Surveys 2025

WHAT THEY MEAN: 

Last March, Marco Rubio, the Secretary of State, announced cancellation of 5,200 U.S. Agency for International Development contracts — all but about 1000 of them – claiming that the projects they underwrote “did not serve, (and in some cases even harmed), the core national interests of the United States.” A PPI guest post today by former USAID economist Kevin Ward looks at one of these projects: an effort to secure American manufacturers’ supply of the “critical mineral” cobalt through a transport project in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Ward’s story illustrates the work USAID professionals actually do — often technical, designed for shared benefit, sometimes entailing personal risk — and also casts an ironic light on Mr. Rubio’s line about national interests and things that don’t serve, or sometimes even harm, them:

As a point of departure, the experts at the U.S. Geological Survey consider a mineral “critical” when it is (a) “essential to the U.S. economy and national security,” and (b) “ha[s] supply chains that are vulnerable to disruption.” Reliable access for American industry to these minerals is thus widely thought (including by the Trump administration) a “core national interest.” USGS’ official list has 50 of them, from arsenic and antimony to zinc and zirconium, complete with their uses, sources, production levels, trade flows, and availability in the U.S..

Cobalt, a bluish metal selling for $33,335 per ton on the London Metal Exchange today, is No. 10 on the list. Used for centuries for stained glass and deep-blue paints, it meets USGS’s two “critical” tests because it is (a) necessary for the heat- and wear-resistant ferroalloys used for aircraft engines, and the lithium-ion batteries that run smartphones and electric vehicles, and (b) in short supply. American factories need about 8,000 tons of cobalt each year, but the lone U.S. source is the Eagle Mine in Michigan, a mainly copper-and-nickel operation which also produces about 300 tons of cobalt, and is set to close in four years.

So most cobalt must come from somewhere else, and one country in particular has a lot. The Democratic Republic of Congo (in central Africa along the eponymous river, formerly Zaire, home to 84 million people) has 55% of the world’s 11 million tons of cobalt reserves, and produces 75% of the world’s 290,000 tons of annual mining output. But as Ward explains, geopolitical uncertainty makes this source “vulnerable to disruption”:

“Though the DRC is the world’s largest cobalt producer and the second largest copper producer, its mineral supply chains are tightly controlled by China: Chinese companies own the country’s largest mines, its local processing operations, and the railroad that takes its minerals to China for additional processing.”

This is where USAID came in. The contract Ward was working on last winter was clearing the way for American businesses to get access without relying on Chinese middlemen:

“To counteract China, USAID supported the growth of a copper processing industry in the DRC and various projects along the Lobito Corridor: an infrastructure initiative connecting the Copperbelt to Angola’s Port of Lobito, increasing access to the U.S. market. As part of that effort, I kicked off a new USAID activity in January of 2025 to help refurbish the railroad from the DRC’s Copperbelt to the Angolan border — a key segment of the Lobito Corridor.”

In sum, a modest U.S. investment would restore a dilapidated railroad outside Chinese control, running from mining areas in the interior to the coast through Angola. Railcars carrying cobalt along it could sell their cargo to American manufacturers. This was one part of a five-year, $235 million program, with additional financial backing from a third U.S. agency (the Development Finance Corporation) and several dozen USAID technical people on the ground. Not a luxury posting for them, to put it mildly — see the State Department’s “Level 4, Do Not Travel” advisory for civilians and CDC’s health warnings about endemic cholera, meningitis, etc. But the job is part of a mission to serve a widely agreed U.S. interest in reducing, or perhaps eliminating, a risk of supply shock for thousands of large American manufacturers, and is the sort of work USAID people regularly do. Ward laconically explains the project’s current status:

“[W]ork came to an abrupt stop on January 20, 2025.”

So: By canceling this particular project, the administration more or less concedes a Chinese monopoly on the largest supply of a critical mineral. In a few years, even designing such projects may be harder: per its 2026 budgeting, the administration hopes to cut USGS by 40%, so by 2027 the government may lack experts on critical mineral reserves and production. The administration is, though, offering a baffling substitute: Mr. Lutnick’s Commerce Department is proposing “national security” tariffs on critical minerals — that is, taxes of 25% or so on essential things not in sufficient supply at home. In practice, this is a chance for American auto, aircraft, and battery companies to pay $41,670 per ton of cobalt, rather than the $33,335 their overseas competitors pay.

Lots more stories like this among the other 5,199 cancellations, of course. So, in a sense, Mr. Rubio is right to say that some people are going around doing things that “do not serve (or even harm) the core national interests” of the United States. He won’t have to look hard to find them.

FURTHER READING

PPI’s four principles for response to tariffs and economic isolationism:

  • Defend the Constitution and oppose rule by decree;
  • Connect tariff policy to growth, work, prices and family budgets, and living standards;
  • Stand by America’s neighbors and allies;
  • Offer a positive alternative.

Kevin Ward on USAID’s Lobito Corridor railway project.

PPI’s February defense of the American foreign assistance tradition —  ideals, interests, and aid — from Herbert Hoover’s World War I famine relief program through JFK’s launch of USAID to PEPFAR‘s HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment, the Millennium Challenge Corporation, and Feed the Future in the 21st century.

New Ukraine Project Director Tamar Jacoby on USAID in Ukraine.

… & Mr. Rubio in March.

Cobalt and critical minerals:

The U.S. Geological Survey explains the “critical minerals” concept and lists the 50 critical minerals.

… and summarizes the cobalt-mining world. The mine outputs in 2024:

World: 290,000 tons
Democratic Republic of Congo 220,000 tons
Indonesia   28,000 tons
Russia     8,700 tons
Canada     4,500 tons
Australia     3,600 tons
United States        300 tons
All other countries   24,700 tons

Cobalt prices at the London Metal Exchange.

… the Eagle Mine in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula is the sole U.S. cobalt producer.

… & the Commerce Department solicits ideas on how American firms can pay more.

The Royal Society of Chemistry’s interactive Periodic Table of the Elements has physical properties and uses for all 118 elements, with cobalt at atomic number 27.

Democratic Republic of Congo:

The Development Finance Corporation announces Lobito Corridor plans, December 2024.

The Democratic Republic of Congo Embassy.

The State Department’s travel advisory has some blunt advice for civilians –  “Do not travel to the Democratic Republic of Congo due to Armed Conflict, Crime, Civil Unrest, Kidnapping, and Terrorism” – and the CDC has guidance on avoiding cholera, meningitis, schistosomiasis, malaria, and other ailments.

The Commerce Department’s guide for U.S. businesses in the DRC is a little more upbeat: “opportunities for firms with a high tolerance for risk and familiarity operating in complex or fragile environments”.

The Labor Department’s International Labor Affairs Bureau has been supporting work to reduce and eliminate child labor in DRC mining, including for cobalt specifically. Perhaps not much longer: as with USGS, the administration hopes to cut ILAB by about 40% this year, and confine its work mostly to issues linked in some way to “trade enforcement”.

ABOUT ED

Ed Gresser is Vice President and Director for Trade and Global Markets at PPI.

Ed returns to PPI after working for the think tank from 2001-2011. He most recently served as the Assistant U.S. Trade Representative for Trade Policy and Economics at the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR). In this position, he led USTR’s economic research unit from 2015-2021, and chaired the 21-agency Trade Policy Staff Committee.

Ed began his career on Capitol Hill before serving USTR as Policy Advisor to USTR Charlene Barshefsky from 1998 to 2001. He then led PPI’s Trade and Global Markets Project from 2001 to 2011. After PPI, he co-founded and directed the independent think tank ProgressiveEconomy until rejoining USTR in 2015. In 2013, the Washington International Trade Association presented him with its Lighthouse Award, awarded annually to an individual or group for significant contributions to trade policy.

Ed is the author of Freedom from Want: American Liberalism and the Global Economy (2007). He has published in a variety of journals and newspapers, and his research has been cited by leading academics and international organizations including the WTO, World Bank, and International Monetary Fund. He is a graduate of Stanford University and holds a Master’s Degree in International Affairs from Columbia Universities and a certificate from the Averell Harriman Institute for Advanced Study of the Soviet Union.

Read the full email and sign up for the Trade Fact of the Week.

New PPI Report Asserts Democrats Must Reclaim Obama’s Vision of American Identity

Posted on by Alex Terr

WASHINGTON  —  A new report from the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) warns that Democrats have strayed from former President Barack Obama’s unifying vision of American national identity — and paid a steep political price. In “How Democrats Have Lost Sight of Obama’s Vision of American National Identity,” PPI contributor Ian Reifowitz contends that the party’s embrace of identity-based rhetoric and policies has alienated working-class voters of all races while failing to deliver electoral gains among communities of color.

Reifowitz, a historian and longtime observer of Obama’s political philosophy, traces how the 44th president’s inclusive and aspirational message helped build a multiracial coalition and win decisive victories. By contrast, he argues, Democratic leaders in the post-Obama era — most notably during the Biden administration — have too often leaned into the race essentialist worldview popular among progressive academics and elite institutions, emphasizing division over universal solutions and common purpose.

“Barack Obama offered Democrats a winning formula: an inclusive patriotism rooted in both realism and hope,” said Reifowitz. “My report shows that abandoning that vision has not only weakened the party’s appeal to working- and middle-class voters — it’s also left a vacuum that demagogues are eager to fill. It’s time to reclaim the idea of America as a unifying force.”

The report details how this shift coincides with declining Democratic support among key demographic groups, including nonwhite and working-class voters, and critiques the left’s overreliance on divisive frameworks such as equity mandates, race-based preferences, and pessimistic historical narratives. Reifowitz calls for a return to a politics that balances acknowledgment of past injustices with belief in America’s capacity for renewal and unity.

The report reinforces the mission of PPI’s American Identity Project and follows the announcement earlier this week of a new advisory group co-chaired by former Treasury Secretary Lawrence H. Summers and New York Times columnist David Brooks. The project seeks to revitalize the civic traditions that sustain American democracy and promote unity in an age of polarization.

“We are proud to publish this splendid report as part of PPI’s larger effort to help Americans escape the thicket of racial identity politics that is so pronounced on both the left and right,” said Richard D. Kahenberg, Director of the American Identity Project. “Ian Reifowitz reminds us of how far many Democrats have moved away from Barack Obama’s powerful, unifying story of America, and the importance of reinvigorating that vision today.”

Read and download the report here.

 

Founded in 1989, PPI is a catalyst for policy innovation and political reform based in Washington, D.C. Its mission is to create radically pragmatic ideas for moving America beyond ideological and partisan deadlock. Find an expert and learn more about PPI by visiting progressivepolicy.org. Follow us @PPI.

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Media Contact: Ian O’Keefe – iokeefe@ppionline.org

Real Mineral Security Requires Foreign Assistance

Posted on by Alyssa Brown

Following a near-total freeze on foreign assistance, the Trump Administration is moving fast to shut down USAID, with plans for the State Department to manage its few remaining assistance programs by July 1.

Ironically, this rash decision will frustrate one of the Trump Administration’s most ambitious foreign policy goals: reducing America’s reliance on China for critical minerals. Along with pausing major programs on health and humanitarian assistance, the Administration shuttered programs that my colleagues at USAID and I had specifically designed to move global mineral supply chains out of Chinese control.

These programs ended at a time when China had already begun leveraging its dominant role in several critical mineral supply chains against the United States. In response to the Biden Administration’s export restrictions on semiconductor technology, China restricted exports of alimony, graphite, germanium, and gallium. More recently, in response to the Trump Administration’s new tariffs, China added new export restrictions for seven rare earth elements, creating severe shortages for American manufacturers.

Mineral security is but one of the many bipartisan foreign policy goals set back in closing USAID. The Administration’s rushed review process failed to identify many programs that were already aligned with its interests — let alone those that could have been easily realigned. As the State Department considers how to use its foreign assistance budget, it should look first to what was lost.

USAID’s approach to critical minerals

Historically, the focus of USAID’s minerals work had been on promoting transparency and accountability in resource governance, which increases opportunities for citizen engagement and limits opportunities for corruption. For example, USAID has long supported the Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative to increase public disclosure on exploration, production, revenue distribution, and ownership. Other initiatives included formalizing illegal mining operations, improving traceability, and increasing enforcement of labor and environmental standards.

These efforts helped deliver economic development to mineral-rich countries, but they also leveled the playing field for American companies competing for foreign contracts. Whereas American companies would risk legal enforcement and public backlash for engaging in corruption or tolerating illegal or otherwise unsavory activity in their supply chains, Chinese companies operate abroad with significantly less scrutiny back home. It is therefore in the interest of American companies that rules and regulations abroad be consistent with those of the United States.

In recent years, USAID’s focus on breaking China’s stranglehold on critical mineral supply chains became more explicit. For example, during the last Administration, USAID expanded its programming in the Copperbelt region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Though the DRC is the world’s largest cobalt producer and the second largest copper producer, its mineral supply chains are tightly controlled by China: Chinese companies own the country’s largest mines, its local processing operations, and the railroad that takes its minerals to China for additional processing.

To counteract China, USAID supported the growth of a copper processing industry in the DRC and various projects along the Lobito Corridor: an infrastructure initiative connecting the Copperbelt to Angola’s Port of Lobito, increasing access to the U.S. market.

As part of that effort, I kicked off a new USAID activity in January of 2025 to help refurbish the railroad from the DRC’s Copperbelt to the Angolan border — a key segment of the Lobito Corridor. The activity would have provided the government of the DRC with a financial model and a stakeholder analysis, helping to accelerate the refurbishment, improve the project’s development outcomes, and mitigate the risk that stakeholders would block the project. And though the project would have also increased access to the DRC’s critical minerals for American manufacturers, the work came to an abrupt stop on January 20, 2025.

What is missing from the Trump Administration’s approach?

The Trump Administration’s foreign policy on critical minerals seems focused on negotiating rights to mineral reserves, from Ukraine to Greenland to the DRC. Presumably, once the U.S. obtains these rights, the U.S. Development Finance Corporation (DFC) would invest taxpayer dollars alongside private capital to mine, process, and transport critical minerals.

DFC, a U.S. government agency first authorized in 2018, is an important part of America’s foreign policy toolkit. Its various financial tools, including loans, equity investment, and political risk insurance, mobilize capital into strategically important projects that would not otherwise attract sufficient investment. In fact, a $553 million loan from DFC to the Lobito Atlantic Railway in 2024 served as the backbone for billions in investment into the Lobito Corridor.

However, DFC financing alone will not achieve the Administration’s desired outcome. There are two functions once held at USAID that are necessary complements to DFC’s investments: transaction support and policy reform.

Transaction Support: Since DFC has a modest overseas presence, USAID often served as its “boots on the ground.” This relationship was codified with a step-by-step manual on how USAID should support DFC transactions. In the sourcing phase, USAID staff’s combination of technical expertise and in-country connections allowed them to identify promising opportunities for DFC financing. And once DFC invested in a project, USAID engaged with stakeholders at all levels — including those in mining regions located far from capital cities — to make DFC’s investments successful.

To fill the gap in transaction support left by the dissolution of USAID, the State Department or DFC itself will have to significantly expand overseas staff with strong development expertise related to the mining industry and extensive in-country networks, likely drawing from former USAID staff.

Policy Reform: In addition to supporting DFC’s work on specific investments, USAID benefited all DFC transactions through programs that improved the policy environment for international investment. More competitive bidding processes allow DFC-backed companies to win contracts, while clear and consistent regulations reduce policy uncertainty throughout the lifetime of an investment.

Moreover, mining under a stronger policy environment has a much lower risk of further damaging America’s global reputation. If a local government fails to enforce environmental regulations or to properly manage its own revenue from the mining project, blame will inevitably fall to the mining company and its investors (such as the U.S. government through DFC). China’s reputation has already suffered this fate in many countries, and it is in the American interest to differentiate itself as the preferred partner.

As with transaction support, the U.S. government will need to build the capacity to help countries implement policy reforms that align with American foreign policy interests, particularly in the mining sector. That capacity existed at USAID, and it can be brought back.

Conclusion

The humanitarian consequences of USAID’s sudden demise have already garnered significant attention in the media. And, while many important programs have been cut, the Administration has decided to keep some of the most prominent life-saving programs.

But the public outcry over USAID has yet to emphasize how foreign assistance also promotes American economic strength, including by reducing our dependence on China for critical minerals. The integration of some USAID’s functions into the State Department presents an opportunity for advocates to refresh their message, perhaps triggering a more comprehensive review of past programs that could salvage some of the development expertise and networks lost with USAID.

How Democrats Lost Sight of Obama’s Vision of National Identity

Posted on by Alyssa Brown

Roughly two decades ago, Barack Obama burst onto the national stage with an address at the 2004 Democratic Convention that captivated millions of Americans. He offered what became his most widely quoted line: “There’s not a black America and white America and Latino America and Asian America; there’s the United States of America.”

Obama connected the language of American unity to progressive policy goals. He described his: “belief that we are connected as one people. If there’s a child on the south side of Chicago who can’t read, that matters to me, even if it’s not my child. If there’s a senior citizen somewhere who can’t pay for her prescription and has to choose between medicine and the rent, that makes my life poorer, even if it’s not my grandmother.”

The speech was not a one-off. I have carefully studied just about every word Barack Obama uttered or wrote in a public forum from the early 1990s through the end of his presidency, and most of the rest since. My book, Obama’s America: A Transformative Vision of Our National Identity, examined his deeply held concepts of America and Americanness. His soaring depiction of our country’s story in which we’ve committed terrible wrongs but drawn upon the founding documents to make remarkable progress resonated with enough Americans to elect and re-elect him to the presidency with commanding margins — a feat accomplished by none of the Democratic Party’s three subsequent presidential candidates.

It should be obvious that Donald Trump’s vision of America represents something like the antithesis of Obama’s. Where Obama sought to unite, Trump divides. As my coauthor and I demonstrate in a forthcoming book, Trump plays on racial stereotypes as a routine feature of his rhetoric. He labeled Mexican immigrants “murderers, child predators and bloodthirsty rapists and drug dealers.” He stated: “I think Islam hates us,” impugning people of an entire religion. He told America that Haitian migrants were eating their pets. And his Defense Secretary ordered the removal from the curriculum of U.S. military service academies any topic focusing on “race, gender or the darker moments of American history.” In large part, Trump rode racial divisiveness to the Republican nomination in 2016 and then to the presidency. For Obama, being divisive was one of the most shameful things a public figure could be. It was, in fact, the strongest criticism he leveled at his own leftwing former pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, in his vitally important 2008 speech titled: “A More Perfect Union: Race, Politics, and Unifying Our Country.” Whereas Trump revels in “blood and soil” nationalism, Obama champions the idea of America.

What’s less obvious but equally important is that Democratic politicians — influenced by far-left academics — have in important ways departed from how the 44th president talks about our history and our national identity in the years since he left office. In fact, I have been astonished by how much influence the views of the academic left — views that depart significantly from Obama’s — have gained even among Democratic officials.

Read the full report.

Manno for Forbes: Civic Education As We Look To Our Nation’s 250th Anniversary

Posted on by Max Sherrill

More than seven out of 10 U.S. adults give a grade of C or worse to K-12 public schools’ efforts to prepare students “to be good citizens.” History and civics 8th-grade test scores are at an all-time low. On the other hand, there is strong support and narrowing political differences between Democrats and Republicans on the importance of civic education, especially students learning civics and history.

In 2026 we will celebrate America’s 250th anniversary commemorating the signing the Declaration of Independence. As we prepare for this event, we should acknowledge both the worrisome and good news and continue to advance efforts that increase students’ knowledge of civics and history.

Troubling News

There are worrisome signs that patriotism, civic knowledge, and civic education are declining. A Gallup poll in 2023 found that 39% of U.S. adults were extremely proud to be an American, compared to 55% in 2001 when the question was first asked. This was essentially unchanged from the 38% record low in 2022. When combining those extremely or very proud, the number dropped from a high of 90% in 2003 to 67% in 2023. There also is a divide on patriotism between younger and older Americans. While 50% of adults aged 55 and older said they are extremely proud to be American, 40% of those aged 35 to 54 and 18% of 18- to 34-year-olds said the same.

Keep reading in Forbes.

PPI Announces Group to Strengthen American Identity

Posted on by Alyssa Brown

WASHINGTON — In advance of Independence Day, a group of prominent Americans, led by former U.S. Treasury Secretary Lawrence H. Summers and New York Times columnist David Brooks, is coming together to provide advice and recommendations about how schools and colleges can best transmit American traditions and civic ideals to the next generation.

The group is seeking to address four related challenges:

  • Social cohesion is eroding on both sides of the political spectrum. Right-wing white nationalists see some citizens as more American than others, while left-wing race essentialists undermine what we have in common as Americans.
  • Historically, our civic creed has provided the glue that unifies Americans of diverse backgrounds; yet today, young Americans report much less faith in America and in democracy than older Americans. Our schools need to do a better job of teaching students what it means to be an American.
  • America’s founders believed education was the safeguard of democracy. Yet our schools have fallen short, as many Americans have demonstrated a troubling tolerance for political leaders who defy long-standing liberal democratic norms.
  • Paradoxically, figures who show autocratic tendencies are sometimes seen by Americans as particularly patriotic, underlining the need for those who stand firmly for democracy to embrace a proud American identity.

Among the other leaders who will advise the Progressive Policy Institute’s American Identity Project are: Former U.S. Senator Doug Jones (Ala.), Former U.S. Senator Bill Bradley (N.J.), Representative Ritchie Torres (N.Y.), Ford Foundation President Darren Walker, Harvard professors Danielle Allen and Elisa New, Brookings scholar William Galston, Center for Equal Opportunity chair Linda Chavez, and Columbia professor Mark Lilla.

“Young people need an education that tells America’s whole story — acknowledging America’s shortcomings but also its idealism and extraordinary achievements. This education merges a love and appreciation of country with clear-eyed recognition that the United States has a long journey on the way to its ‘more perfect union,’” said Summers, who is president emeritus of Harvard University.

Brooks added: “It is fashionable in some elite circles to denigrate patriotism, but a deep belief in American ideals has fueled much of the progress in this country, from advances in civil rights to those for women. If our schools do not instill a healthy love of our country’s highest aspirations, we are greatly diminished as a people.” 

“A nation cannot endure if its children are taught to loathe it,” said Rep. Torres. “In a time of deep division and democratic backsliding, we must instill in the next generation not only a critical understanding of our history, but a proud sense of what it means to be an American. The American Identity Project is essential to renewing our civic spirit and strengthening the democratic values that hold us together.”

“At a time of great national division that only seems to be getting wider, it’s enormously important that our public schools teach our young people a common American identity,” remarked Senator Jones. “That’s good policy, good politics, and is truly what makes America great. It’s time for those of us alarmed by Donald Trump to recapture the mantle of patriotism.”

“You cannot expect people to change a country for the better if they do not love it enough to care,” added Lilla. “It’s time to remind ourselves what we share and why it matters.” 

“My identity as a Black person, a Texan, and a gay man are all important to me, but my most cherished identity is that of being an American,” said Walker. “It’s critical that our students learn the shared values that bind us together across lines of race, gender, class, sexuality, region, and ideology.”

“We are on the verge of losing the idea that we are one nation,” Chavez observed. “In the words of our national motto, E Pluribus Unum: Out of Many, One. Forging a common identity has been vital to our success as an immigrant nation, and the American Identity Project will help preserve that ideal.”

“Next year marks the 250th anniversary of America’s grand experiment in individual liberty and democratic self-government,” said PPI President Will Marshall. “What better time to reaffirm the primacy of our shared civic identity as Americans over our various tribal identities and loyalties? That’s what makes U.S. pluralism a source of national strength, and it’s the mission of PPI’s new American Identity Project.”

Richard D. Kahlenberg, Director of PPI’s American Identity Project, thanked the advisory board members for offering to guide PPI’s thinking about “what can be done to address one of the central puzzles of modern political times: how those who champion the values America’s Founders held dear are seen as less patriotic than those who threaten liberal democratic norms on a daily basis. We urgently need new approaches.” 

More background information can be found at PPI’s American Identity Project webpage, which includes a 7-page prospectus that explains the need for the project, its parameters, and its potential impact; a 50-page overview report previewing areas of future research, and inspiring examples of groups doing promising work; and a shorter summary of the overview report that appeared in The Liberal Patriot.

The American Identity Project is consistent with PPI’s longstanding commitment to promote fresh policy ideas that draw strong public support from a broad range of Americans. Promoting a reflective patriotism has been a common PPI principle that has animated, among other things, PPI’s policy ideas around national service that were implemented by President Bill Clinton with the creation of AmeriCorps.  

Founded in 1989, PPI is a catalyst for policy innovation and political reform based in Washington, D.C. Its mission is to create radically pragmatic ideas for moving America beyond ideological and partisan deadlock. Find an expert and learn more about PPI by visiting progressivepolicy.org. Follow us @PPI.

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Media Contact: Ian O’Keefe – iokeefe@ppionline.org

GOP’s “Big Beautiful Bill” Would Undermine Economic Stability

Posted on by Alyssa Brown

Much has been written about the great harm Republicans’ “One Big Beautiful Bill” (OBBB) would do to the federal government’s finances and the financial well-being of low-income Americans. But less appreciated is how adding trillions of dollars to the deficit during a time of high price pressures, and making major cuts to safety-net programs that help cushion the economy during downturns, would undermine economic stability.  

When the country enters a recession and demand from the private sector drops, deficit-financed spending is an essential tool governments use to help fill the void and restore the economy to full strength. Conversely, policymakers should rein in deficits to prevent inflation and restore the country’s fiscal reserve when the economy has recovered. Last year, the economy grew at a healthy 2.4% annual rate. Although President Trump’s counterproductive trade policies have threatened to reverse this trend, the nation’s unemployment rate has so far remained stable around 4.2% — a historically low level. Meanwhile, the inflation rate remains stubbornly above the Federal Reserve’s 2% target after years of rising prices. Normally, this would be the perfect time for Congress to cut deficits, clamp down on inflationary pressures, and put debt on a sustainable path.

But despite campaigning against the fiscal excesses and inflationary policies of the Biden administration, Republicans’ OBBB pours fuel on the fire by pumping trillions of dollars into the economy when they’re not needed. In addition to extending the already-unaffordable tax cuts passed in President Trump’s first term, this bill tacks on expensive new provisions such as eliminating taxes on overtime and tips. Moreover, many of these provisions are temporary, supercharging the short-term impact on our deficit at precisely the time when our nation needs the opposite: nearly three-fourths of the House bill’s roughly $3 trillion deficit increase would occur in just the first four years after passage.

Yet in addition to sabotaging the government’s ability to fight inflation now, OBBB would also make it more difficult for the government to fight future economic downturns. Pointlessly piling on debt now can make it harder for the government to borrow more during a recession when it’s actually needed. And some of the few policies Republicans have included to reduce the cost of the bill would undermine programs that are most helpful in supporting the economy through those recessions, such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). 

SNAP is a strong “automatic stabilizer” because spending on benefits increases automatically when the U.S. economy slips into recession, as falling incomes cause more people to become eligible for support. An integral feature of SNAP is that administrators may also waive the program’s work requirements when an area “does not have a sufficient number of jobs,” which often occurs during a recession. Under federal rules, various geographic areas can demonstrate their eligibility for these waivers through several criteria, including averages of unemployment rates, eligibility for special unemployment benefits, and more, ensuring that benefits are not stalled when needed the most. 

OBBB removes this flexibility. States would only be able to request waivers for counties, while the only acceptable metric to prove a weak labor market would be an unemployment rate above 10%. For context: During the worst of the Great Recession, the national unemployment rate only hit 10% in a single month, while 40% of counties never reached that threshold at all. In addition, the House bill includes new cost-sharing requirements for states, which would require states to pay up to 25% of SNAP’s cost depending on the state’s payment error rate (the Senate has proposed limiting cost-sharing to 15% in its version of the bill). 

Although reducing improper payments is certainly an admirable goal, this legislation undermines that effort by cutting federal support for SNAP administrative costs. And taken together, OBBB’s changes would be especially detrimental during recessions. Because most states are legally not permitted to run budget deficits, they are forced to make painful budget cuts when revenues fall during downturns. At the same time, payment error rates for SNAP and other similar programs tend to rise as states scramble to process a new wave of applications. Thus, the GOP cost-sharing requirements would force states to shoulder a growing share of SNAP costs when they can least afford it, likely leading to spending cuts that prolong recessions. 

Republicans might claim that these fears are overblown because Congress is free to change SNAP’s waiver and cost-sharing requirements during a crisis (as it has done in the past). However, requiring Congress to pass legislation to unlock SNAP leaves the program vulnerable to political gridlock, and undermines its ability to automatically stabilize the economy. Moreover, if these requirements are suspended during future recessions, they will fail to generate the savings that Republicans claim will pay for their costly tax cut and make the bill’s deficit impact that much worse. By piling on debt during a time of high prices and low unemployment, while making it needlessly more difficult to fight future downturns when the situation is reversed, OBBB undercuts any argument one could make that Republicans are the party of fiscal responsibility and stable economic growth. 

Deeper Dive: 

Fiscal Fact: 

The tax portion of the Senate’s reconciliation plan would cost $4.2 trillion over 10 years — roughly $500 billion more than the House’s legislation. However, if all the tax policies in both bills were made permanent, the Senate version would cost $400 billion less than the House bill (which would cost $5.2 trillion over 10 years). Importantly, the Senate bill’s price tag is expected to grow once Senate Republicans reach a deal to increase the cap on the state and local tax deduction, and none of these cost estimates include additional interest on the debt that the legislation would rack up.

Other Fiscal News:

More from PPI and the Center for Funding America’s Future:

“Trump Accounts” Are a Promising Start, But Flaws Remain

Posted on by Alex Terr

Although Republicans’ “One Big Beautiful Bill” (OBBB) remains deeply problematic as a package, one of its few positive provisions would create individual savings accounts for American children with many similarities to a policy proposed by PPI earlier this year. Currently known as “Trump Accounts,” these investment vehicles would provide every child born between 2025 and 2028 with a tax-deferred account and an initial $1,000 seed contribution from the federal Treasury. The proposal is a surprisingly good first step towards helping America’s youth build wealth and access opportunity, but it needs improvements to fully achieve its policy goals.

Children born into low-wealth families typically start life at a significant disadvantage, lacking both financial resources and access to other tools that promote long-term economic security. Meanwhile, their high-income peers can often rely on family to get ahead — helping them to pay for college, buy a home, or make lucrative professional connections. Proposals to establish investment accounts for children aim to address this gap by giving every child a foundation on which to build a more stable financial future.

Trump Accounts would make some limited progress towards this goal due to several good design features. First, the program is nearly universal: nearly all American children born between 2025 and 2028 would be eligible to receive a one-time $1,000 contribution into a tax-deferred investment account, which reduces the administrative hurdles of more complex eligibility criteria. The accounts would be invested into broad index funds, which avoids both the risk of speculative investments and the limitations of investing only in government bonds. Limiting withdrawals before age 30 to activities such as higher education, homeownership, or starting a business encourages beneficiaries to use funds for building wealth or expanding economic opportunities. Lastly, by subjecting qualified withdrawals to capital gains taxes — which only apply to individuals who have annual incomes over $63,000 and couples who earn twice that amount — policymakers prevent these accounts from becoming a regressive tax shelter that primarily benefits wealthy families. 

But while they are a credible start, Trump Accounts fall short in several critical ways. Although the accounts provide an initial government contribution to all children, they offer no mechanism to supplement savings for low-income families, who are the least likely to have additional funds to contribute to the account. Therefore, it provides the same amount of support to low-income children, who need it the most, as it does to wealthy children, who don’t need it at all. Furthermore, the accounts lack any material support to help account holders build financial literacy and other skills needed to grow modest account balances into long-term wealth. 

Perhaps the biggest flaw is that there is very little reason under current law for families to put additional contributions into Trump Accounts, given the existence of other savings accounts with greater tax advantages. For example, 529 plans are savings accounts that offer generous contribution limits and completely tax-free growth if withdrawals are used for education. Trump accounts, on the other hand, only delay taxes on the sale of assets until money is withdrawn from the account. As long as families can contribute to 529s, there is no incentive to use or save with the relatively less tax-advantaged Trump accounts.

These flaws could all be mitigated by incorporating more elements of the Child Opportunity Accounts (COAs) previously proposed by PPI. Like Trump Accounts, COAs would start with a seed contribution at birth, but go further by providing ongoing, income-based contributions throughout a child’s life. By the time they reach adulthood, a low-income child would have tens of thousands of dollars saved in their account — compared to just a few thousand in a Trump Account. 

COAs also incorporate financial education directly into the account structure to help beneficiaries get the most bang for their buck. Account portals would include information on investing, budgeting, and other financial management topics to help owners build up their knowledge of basic concepts. Before beneficiaries can access funds at younger ages, they would be required to complete a basic financial literacy assessment. This simple requirement ensures that young adults have the tools they need to not just wisely use their account savings, but also grow them over time. 

Policymakers could both offset the cost of additional supplemental contributions (or other provisions of OBBB) and make the accounts more useful by phasing out the use of 529 plans, which PPI proposed in a comprehensive budget blueprint last year. Because the taxes from which 529 accounts are exempt only apply to higher-income households, and because the highest-income households would pay a higher rate, the tax benefit of 529s is quite regressive: more than 70% of tax benefits go to households in the top 7% of the income distribution. By removing them as an option and using the savings to improve Trump accounts, policymakers can shift federal subsidies away from high-income households and toward those who truly need them.  

If the goal is to give every child a fair shot at building a secure financial future, we need policies that not just account for the different resources they need, but also give them the skills and knowledge essential for a successful financial future. As Senate Republicans grapple with their bill’s astronomical cost and regressivity, incorporating these elements of PPI’s previous proposals would be a small, positive step to improve their bill and redirect federal resources to those who need them most.

New PPI Report Finds GOP’s Medicaid Cuts Reckless and Wasteful

Posted on by Alex Terr

WASHINGTON — As President Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” moves through Congress, one section included in the legislation will not only skyrocket the cost of living for many working-class Americans, but will also impact how they receive critical care. As part of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, Congressional Republicans are presenting an $880 billion cut to Medicaid that will kick more than 8.6 million Americans off the program and slash critical health care funding in the communities that need it most.

In a new report for the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI), Alix Ware, Director of Health Care Policy, argues that the proposed Medicaid cuts harm working Americans trying to make ends meet, force rural and underresourced hospitals to close, and push more people to rely on emergency rooms for routine care. Titled “The High Cost of Republican Medicaid ‘Savings,’” Ware’s research dives into how the GOP cuts don’t actually save Americans money or make the program more efficient, instead excluding people from getting the necessary health care they need to survive.

“These cuts aren’t about efficiency — they’re about shifting costs onto working families while giving the wealthiest Americans a tax break,” said Ware. “The bill adds bureaucracy, guts coverage, and penalizes states for innovation, all under the false promise of ‘savings.’”

Key takeaways from the report include how, in its current form, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act:

  • Removes 8.6 million Americans from Medicaid;
  • Threatens the stability of hospitals in rural or underserved communities, many which will have to close or reduce hours;
  • Creates harmful work requirements for many recipients who already meet the requirements to be eligible for the program;
  • Forces Americans to go to emergency rooms for routine visits that cost more money and make hospitals more inefficient, or forgo medical treatment altogether;
  • Eliminates state Medicaid expansion programs that have saved millions; and
  • Reduces access to preventative care as red tape makes it difficult to schedule the necessary appointments to get the help they need before it’s too late

Ware argues that instead of pursuing reckless cuts that restrict Medicaid coverage for those who need it most, Congress should focus on improving the program’s efficiency by eliminating unnecessary red tape — such as work requirements that most recipients already meet — and streamlining paperwork to save both time and money.  States, Ware says, have been at the forefront of Medicaid innovation, like Oregon and Maryland, where pragmatic legislators have controlled care costs and made it easier for people to access affordable care — reducing the need for costly emergency room visits for routine health issues.

“The U.S. health system is a complicated mess,” said Ware. “Instead of restricting health care for people who cannot afford it, lawmakers from both parties should seek bipartisan consensus on provisions that reduce inefficiencies while increasing access to coordinated and comprehensive care like Coordinated Care Organizations that reduce emergency room visits,  and the Total Cost of Care Model that lowered costs and improved the quality of care.”

Read and download the report here.

Founded in 1989, PPI is a catalyst for policy innovation and political reform based in Washington, D.C. Its mission is to create radically pragmatic ideas for moving America beyond ideological and partisan deadlock. Find an expert and learn more about PPI by visiting progressivepolicy.org. Follow us @PPI.

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Media Contact: Ian O’Keefe – iokeefe@ppionline.org

The High Cost of Republican Medicaid “Savings”

Posted on by Alex Terr

Congressional Republicans are disingenuously presenting their $880 billion Medicaid cut in the budget reconciliation bill as an enormous savings to Americans. But this cut in federal health care spending will have very different repercussions for all Americans, regardless of whether they have Medicaid, Medicare, or private insurance.

The GOP’s “one, big, beautiful bill” will kick 8.6 million Americans off Medicaid, leaving them no recourse but to forgo medical treatment or go to hospital emergency rooms — absolutely the most expensive way to deliver care in America. We know from experience that most will choose the emergency room if they have no insurance.

The Republican plan will also reduce access to health care when hospitals close, and worse health outcomes when people delay care. The National Rural Health Association warns that “drastic cuts…will force many rural facilities to reduce or cut service lines or close their doors entirely, impacting access to care for everyone who lives in the community.” If fewer people seek medical help in the early stages of an illness or injury for even a short period, diminished patient flows will put safety net hospitals at risk for closing. If these facilities close, many Americans, particularly in rural parts of the country that voted heavily for President Trump, will be harmed.

Some House Republicans were so concerned with the threat to “the viability of hospitals, nursing homes, and safety-net providers nationwide,” they sent a letter to House Republican leadership. The letter acknowledged, “Many hospitals — particularly in rural and underserved areas — rely heavily on Medicaid funding, with some receiving over half their revenue from the program alone. Providers in these areas are especially at risk of closure, with many unable to recover.” Despite these dire concerns, Trump demanded their compliance, and eventually they capitulated.

The U.S. is already an outlier compared to similarly wealthy countries, spending nearly double per capita on health expenditures than the average of other similar countries. Switzerland is the closest in per capita spending at $9,688 compared to the $13,432 the U.S. spends. The U.S. spends a larger percentage of its GDP on health expenditures as well. Despite spending so much more, the U.S. has lower life expectancy, higher age-adjusted mortality rate, and a higher premature death rate. In the U.S., 26.8 patients out of every 100 patients skip a medical appointment due to cost, compared to an average of 7.0 in comparable countries. It is unacceptable for the U.S. to be falling this far behind. Congress needs to address this gap, but kicking millions off of Medicaid is not the way to do it.

Instead of reforming the system to reduce inefficiencies and drive down costs, Republicans are imposing changes that will force the middle and working classes to pay more. Health care, a necessity that already eats up too much of the average working family’s income, is therefore slated to become even more expensive — all so the rich can enjoy a tax cut.

Read the full report.

At NATO Summit, Allies Avoid Tensions with Trump

Posted on by Alex Terr

The young European officials and defense experts gathered for an informal dinner at an international conference in Europe earlier this month were caustic and unequivocal. “NATO is dead,” one member of parliament from a Central European country declared bluntly. “Why are we bothering to keep up the pretense?”

Others at the table nodded in agreement—no discussion needed. Whether or not Donald Trump someday makes good on his threat to pull out of the alliance, he has already rendered it all but toothless by suggesting, again and again, that he might not defend a NATO member under attack. For skeptical Europeans like the young officials at dinner, it’s a terrifying moment, leaving a largely defenseless Europe to face an aggressive, revanchist Russia. “We should stop wasting energy on NATO,” another parliamentarian, from a second country, agreed. “We need to focus on building an alternative.”

This week, there was none of that skepticism at the annual NATO summit in The Hague. Trump cast a shadow over the meeting even before he arrived, once again raising doubts about his willingness to defend Europe and comply with Article 5 of the NATO charter, stipulating that an attack on one is an attack on all. “Depends on your definition,” Trump told reporters on Air Force One. “There are numerous definitions of Article 5.” The only time Article 5 has been invoked in the past was when allies rushed to help prosecute the war in Afghanistan after 9/11.

Read more in Washington Monthly.

AI and the Future of Local News

Posted on by Alex Terr

In the face of prevailing industry headwinds, many local news outlets around the country have shuttered. Their continued overreliance on an advertising-based revenue model, a vestige of the pre-internet times, leaves them vulnerable to further decline. Just in the last year, 130 more newspapers folded — a rate of two and a half a week — leading to a total loss of over 7,000 newsroom jobs. At the same time, others who took note of changing consumer preferences for the digital over print format saw a net increase of 105 outlets. To not just survive, but thrive in today’s fast-moving news media landscape, where consumers lean towards new formats such as short-form video, local outlets must embrace a tech-forward attitude. This means adopting the newest tools on the block, including AI, that advance newsroom productivity and capacity for producing high-quality, public interest journalism.

Building networks of trust among communities and sustaining vibrant information ecosystems are non-negotiables for healthy democracies. When local news deserts proliferate, communities experience diminished civic engagement: lower voter turnout, fewer contested races, and poorer public participation. It’s no secret either that the loss of reliable sources of information exacerbates urban-rural polarization. National news media rarely covers localities, and even less so when they are located in rural areas. Simultaneously, the most prolific outlets are also often the least attuned to the situation on the ground in most of working America, undermining valuable discourse in overlooked communities.

Reversing these trends requires an honest reckoning with the multi-faceted challenges that local newsrooms face. Their tenuous fiscal situations leave them under-resourced on several fronts. Local reporters must juggle multiple beats at a time, covering city council hearings, school board meetings, and small business openings, all the while performing serious investigative work. This workload makes devoting the requisite attention to unearthing and covering scoops well extremely difficult. Understaffing also inhibits other critical newsroom functions, such as fact-checking, translating, and distributing published stories. Without these supporting activities, local news risks its journalistic credibility and loses reach into communities. The shift to digital further exposes key skill deficiencies in local newsrooms, namely expertise in audience analytics and web design, that inhibit their ability to cater to relevant audiences. That’s especially important at a time when more young people are turning to social media for information that was once the bread and butter of a local newsroom — restaurant recommendations, classifieds, community events, and sporting fixtures.

Given the status quo, local newsrooms should welcome artificial intelligence as a tool for increasing high-quality coverage. AI holds enormous potential for local outlets because it excels at many functions that newsrooms currently lack due to budget cuts. For one, AI thrives when tasked with pattern recognition, which is highly useful for investigations that require journalists to process large datasets, such as troves of municipal documents. Another area of strength is AI’s aptitude for automating already standardized tasks like translation. For local outlets that serve multilingual audiences, accessible translations may meaningfully increase public engagement with existing coverage. 

AI may also help newsrooms scale their digital presence to better deliver content in the format that most audiences now prefer, including generating audio and video versions, summaries, and visual explainers. When local news media are able to engage well with their audiences online, their reach significantly expands. AI can help local newsrooms level the playing field in the face of upstart new competitors (like news creators on Instagram), and the larger hedge fund-owned conglomerates (who can invest in digital expertise and apportion the cost across multiple mastheads).

Indeed, it’s clear that newsroom productivity and the development of new capabilities are critical issues given new competitive dynamics and shifting consumer expectations. Consumers have a preference for new formats, as shown by the rise of TikTok as a source of news and the continuing long-term decline in consumers’ use of publisher-owned and operated platforms (e.g., websites and apps) in favor of social media. 

At the same time, due to staffing shortages, local reporters have a lot more on their plates than in the past. For example, local reporters covered an average of 3.8 different levels of government in 2000 (e.g., cities, counties, school boards, special districts, townships), which increased to 10 different levels of government in 2020. When they are already spread so thin, building trustworthy sourcing, chasing new leads, parsing through troves of documents, or otherwise pursuing time-consuming investigations becomes a near impossibility. 

With the acknowledgement that local newsrooms are under-resourced, AI can play a crucial role in expanding their investigative capacity. Tools like LocalLens, an AI-powered application launched in 2023 that automatically transcribes and summarizes local government meetings, allow journalists to cast their net far and wide for potential story ideas. LocalLens has also helped reporters connect with sources, such as student speakers at school board meetings, whom they might not have found on their own. Another example is the Associated Press’ 2024 launch of LocalLede, which uncovers relevant regulations from over 430 federal agencies for local jurisdictions. LocalLede can serve as a useful starting point for writing stories, flagging new federal announcements like changes to Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) thresholds. Other AI tools have further enriched investigative journalism, helping reporters process large amounts of public records, including campaign finance disclosures, civil complaints, and municipal budgets.

AI tools also streamline repetitive tasks, allowing local news outlets to redirect limited resources to where they are needed most. Their pervasiveness in copy editing at major publications, for fact-checking and grammar and style corrections, should serve as a model for local newsrooms that still perform these tasks by hand. Natural language-processing-based services like Otter.ai save reporters countless hours whenever they need written transcriptions after conducting interviews. AI has also shown promise in automating translation work. When wildfires swept across Los Angeles in January 2025, the Boyle Heights Beat used a beta version of English-to-Spanish translation GPT to make their coverage and social media updates available to Spanish-speaking members of the community. 

For local newsrooms falling behind in their digital offerings due to the lack of technical expertise on staff, AI provides a means to catch up with larger counterparts. THE CITY, a non-profit outlet that covers all boroughs of New York City, currently offers AskNellie, an AI assistant that answers readers’ questions ranging from rent regulations to upcoming elections by connecting them with previous coverage. In 2024, the publication previously used artificial intelligence to create an online map of its areas of coverage, which provided transparency to audiences about whether or not they were sufficiently documenting underserved communities. ARLNow, a local Northern Virginia outlet, increased online engagement through publishing an automated daily newsletter, which they lacked the staff to compile before using AI to do so. 

While artificial intelligence has the potential to significantly improve local news media, it is important to approach its rollout with prudence. Failing to think through the specifics of applying AI to specific use cases will result in conspicuous misfires. For example, shortly after launching AI-authored high school sports coverage at several of its local news outlets, including the Columbus Dispatch in 2023, newspaper conglomerate Gannett pulled the project due to widespread backlash from readers for poor quality post-game summaries. Also in 2023, at CNET, editors had to issue numerous corrections to financial advice articles written by AI that contained obvious factual errors. Sports Illustrated showed poor judgment in November 2023 when the publication added fake journalist names and profiles to AI-generated content. When used judiciously, AI is a valuable tool for revitalizing local outlets, bringing them into the modern news media landscape, but it cannot be applied as a blanket solution without thoughtful consideration.

Ultimately, local news must keep up with the times. Embracing AI enables local outlets to make the most out of their limited resources — continuing to produce high-quality investigations, reach larger audiences, and put out competitive digital offerings. While local newsrooms may not completely reverse their decline anytime soon, adopting a tech-forward attitude will at least help them take steps in the right direction, ensuring that they can serve as more robust informational backbones for local communities who rely on their coverage.

80% of American hourly-wage workers are in ‘services’

Posted on by Alex Terr

FACT: 65 million of America’s 80 million hourly-wage workers are in “services.”

THE NUMBERS: Americans at work, 2024* –

2024 Change 2018/2024
Total employed 161.35 million +5.59 million
Salaried and other non-wage workers   81.00 million +6.51 million
Hourly-wage workers   80.35 million -0.92 million
… hourly-wage in health           12.90 million  +0.54 million
… hourly-wage in retail   10.86 million   -0.44 million
… hourly-wage in manufacturing     8.45 million      -0.96 million
… hourly-wage in restaurants         7.26 million  -0.07 million
… hourly-wage in construction      5.62 million    +0.12 million

* Bureau of Labor Statistics, Current Population Survey.

WHAT THEY MEAN:
The paradox at the core of the Trump administration’s tariff decrees: for American working life to improve, they argue, working-class living standards must fall. (Three TVs are too many for a working family, two dolls per girl should be enough, no price would be too high for locally-made toasters, etc.) Put more sympathetically, the administration’s claim is that while tariffs raise prices for families, they will offset this by shifting workers out of their current jobs into factories.

This may or may not be what workers actually want — as PPI President Will Marshall noted last week, polling suggests workers look more to tech industries than factories for next-generation jobs. Either way, seven years of experience with Mr. Trump’s first-term tariffs (imposed from early 2018 to late 2019), and several months’ experience with this spring’s larger decrees, provide some evidence as to whether tariffs actually do this.  Two definitions, then the data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics:

Working Americans: According to the BLS, 161.4 million Americans were employed last year.  Half of them, 80.35 million, earned their income in hourly wages. (As opposed to annual salaries, executive profit-sharing arrangements, investments, professional fees, etc..)  About 80% of hourly-wage Americans — 65 million of the 80.35 million— work in “services” jobs: waiting tables, stocking grocery shelves, replacing brake-pads, trimming hair, cleaning halls, and running hospital admissions desks. The other 20%, 15.3 million people, are in “industrial” or  “goods-producing” work in factories, farms, construction sites, mines, and logging and fishing jobs. Here’s a rundown with some more detail:

All employed Americans, 2024 161.35 million
Salaried and other non-wage workers 81.00 million
Hourly-wage workers 80.35 million
… in health 12.90 million
… in retail 10.86 million
… in manufacturing   8.45 million
… in restaurants & other food services   7.26 million
… in construction   5.62 million
… in “other   services”*   3.15 million
… in education   1.94 million
… in agriculture, forestry, & fisheries   0.86 million
… in accommodation   0.84 million
… in maid/domestic work   0.47 million
… in mining   0.32 million
All other 27.68 million

* “Other services” is a miscellaneous BLS category including personal care work such as hair salons and beauty parlors, repair shops, dry-cleaning and laundry, funeral homes, non-profits, and others.

Tariffs: Tariffs are taxes on purchases of goods (whether consumer products, raw materials, or industrial inputs) from a foreign supplier.  Their effects on goods-producing industries and their employees are complex: they give some manufacturers, mining companies, and farmers “protection” from foreign competition, harm others by raising production costs and diminishing exports, and give many a confusing mix of both things. But for workers in the services industries — again, seven eight hourly-wage workers in every eight — tariffs just mean higher prices.

If the administration is right, new opportunities in factory jobs might offset some of their losses. But since there are so many more workers in services than goods production, it would take lots of job-shifting for working America to gain on net. And in fact we aren’t seeing any such job shifting at all — since 2018, hourly-wage manufacturing employment has been at best flat and has more likely shrunk.  Three perspectives from the BLS, on total employment, job openings, and hourly-wage jobs:

(a) Manufacturing employment been flat since 2018, and down 88,000 this year. BLS’ monthly “Employment Situation” reports found about 12.7 million manufacturing workers in 2018. This was about 1.2 million above the 11.5 million jobs at the financial-crisis low in early 2010, reflecting slow but steady growth during and just after the Obama administration. In 2024, they found 12.8 million manufacturing jobs, suggesting that job creation had slowed. The most recent report, for May 2025, is once again at 12.7 million, down 88,000 over the past year with losses concentrated in metal-using industries such as farm equipment, auto parts, and machinery.

(b) Fewer open manufacturing jobs: A second BLS survey, “Job Openings and Labor Turnover”, reported about 500,000 open factory jobs at any given time in 2023 and 2024.  The precise figure for January 2025, just before Mr. Trump’s first 2025 tariff decree, was 513,000 open jobs.  Since then, job openings have contracted each month, to 381,000 in May. Except for three anomalous pandemic months in early 2020, this is the smallest number of open jobs in eight years.

(c) Fewer hourly-wage manufacturing jobs, but more salaried manufacturing jobs. Within manufacturing, meanwhile, companies appear to be hiring more very high-skill employees and fewer line-type workers.  BLS’ annual “Current Population Survey” (which counts differently and gets somewhat larger numbers) reports a net loss of 700,000 manufacturing jobs from 2018 to 2024, from 15.7 million to 15.0 million.  Within this overall total, hourly-wage work has fallen sharply — down nearly a million, from 9.41 million to 8.45 million jobs — but salaried and other non-wage employment has grown by nearly 300,000. This suggests structural change, with factories relying relatively less on human labor, and relatively more on computers, robots, and human experts such as engineers and software professionals.

So: Lots of factors affect employment, and disentangling the effects of the post-2018 tariffs from those of business cycle fluctuations, technological change, the COVID-19 pandemic, and other things isn’t easy. But the last decade’s experience gives little credence to administration arguments that higher tariffs mean more manufacturing work. Calling the claim “fool’s gold,” Marshall has a different approach, amplified last week by an in-depth paper from PPI’s Deanna Ross and Bruno Manno on apprenticeships and skill development. That is, recognize the premium businesses of all kinds are placing on expertise, understand that college degrees shouldn’t always be needed for these jobs, and help non-college workers qualify for the higher-skill jobs (in any industry) where most hiring seems to be going on:

“[A] new national commitment to guaranteeing ‘high skills for all.’ Non-college Americans, a majority of the electorate, need a more robust alternative to college: A post-secondary system of work-study opportunities that enable young people to get in-demand skills, credentials, and work experience quickly and affordably.”

FURTHER READING

PPI’s four principles for response to tariffs and economic isolationism:

  • Defend the Constitution and oppose rule by decree;
  • Connect tariff policy to growth, work, prices and family budgets, and living standards;
  • Stand by America’s neighbors and allies;
  • Offer a positive alternative.

PPI on workers, career paths, and better non-college opportunities:

PPI President Will Marshall on workers, job aspirations, the error in promising more factory jobs, and the right path for policy.

Out on June 12, Director of Workforce Development Policy Deanna Ross and Senior Advisor Bruno Manno on apprenticeships, alternatives to college, and opportunity for non-college workers.

And PPI’s poll of non-college Americans last year, with material on jobs, trade, politics, foreign affairs, and more.

Data: 

The Bureau of Labor Statistics’ database.

… their monthly “Employment Situation” reports.

… annual summaries from the Current Population Survey.

… and the Job Openings and Labor Turnover survey, with tallies of monthly and annual job openings, hiring, layoffs, and quits.

Public opinion:

Bowling Green State University has a late-April look at opinion in Ohio, with agreements and divergences among Ohioans vis-à-vis tariffs:

“Tariffs and the U.S. as a country”: Asked about the effect of Mr. Trump’s tariffs on the United States as a whole, respondents with and without college degrees differed. Those with college degrees thought the effects negative by 55%-34%. Non-college Ohioans split more evenly: 46% thought tariffs would hurt the country, and 40% that they would help.

“Tariffs and people like me”: This gap nearly closed when the question turned to personal impact. College-educated views didn’t change much: 56% said the tariffs would “hurt” them, and 24% thought tariffs would “help,” and 20% were unsure. Non-college Ohioans were almost as pessimistic — that is, far more likely to say that tariffs would hurt them individually than that they would be bad for the country — with 48% believing tariffs would “hurt” them and only 27% “help,” while 27% weren’t sure.

Union households: Respondents in labor union households were especially negative: 62% thought the tariffs would hurt them, and only 21% thought they would help.

ABOUT ED

Ed Gresser is Vice President and Director for Trade and Global Markets at PPI.

Ed returns to PPI after working for the think tank from 2001-2011. He most recently served as the Assistant U.S. Trade Representative for Trade Policy and Economics at the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR). In this position, he led USTR’s economic research unit from 2015-2021, and chaired the 21-agency Trade Policy Staff Committee.

Ed began his career on Capitol Hill before serving USTR as Policy Advisor to USTR Charlene Barshefsky from 1998 to 2001. He then led PPI’s Trade and Global Markets Project from 2001 to 2011. After PPI, he co-founded and directed the independent think tank Progressive Economy until rejoining USTR in 2015. In 2013, the Washington International Trade Association presented him with its Lighthouse Award, awarded annually to an individual or group for significant contributions to trade policy.

Ed is the author of Freedom from Want: American Liberalism and the Global Economy (2007). He has published in a variety of journals and newspapers, and his research has been cited by leading academics and international organizations including the WTO, World Bank, and International Monetary Fund. He is a graduate of Stanford University and holds a Master’s Degree in International Affairs from Columbia Universities and a certificate from the Averell Harriman Institute for Advanced Study of the Soviet Union.

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Strikes Without Competent Diplomacy Risk Open-Ended Conflict in the Middle East

Posted on by Alex Terr

Set aside the questionable legality and debatable wisdom of the air strikes ordered by President Trump this past Saturday against Iranian nuclear facilities. Ignore, for a moment, the technical prowess displayed by the U.S. military as well as Trump’s more recent attempts to force a cease-fire between Israel and Iran by shouting loudly on social media. Focus instead on the question of what, exactly, the United States hoped to accomplish with this strike — and how likely it is that the Trump administration will be able to actually attain its stated goals related to Iran’s nuclear program.

But Trump himself has repeatedly muddied the waters about what he seeks to achieve with his Iran policy in general and these strikes in particular. The strikes themselves appear to have been narrowly focused on three key Iranian nuclear facilities, and high-level administration officials like Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, and Secretary of State and acting National Security Adviser Marco Rubio, took to the Sunday talk show circuit to assert that the United States did not seek to overthrow Iran’s odious regime through military force. Later that day, however, President Trump wrote a social media post that seemingly called for regime change in order to “MAKE IRAN GREAT AGAIN.” 

Taking Vance, Hegseth, and Rubio at their words and presuming limited policy objectives focused on curtailing Tehran’s nuclear program, it’s hard to see how this president and administration can actually achieve their goals. American bombs may well have severely degraded Iran’s nuclear capabilities, and it remains to be seen just how severely those capabilities have been degraded — but right now, they do not appear to have been destroyed. 

Israel’s air campaign reportedly set Iran’s ability to build a nuclear bomb back just six months, while one former Trump administration official estimated that this past weekend’s American strikes “will likely set back the Iranian nuclear weapon program two to five years.” What’s more, the fate of Iran’s stockpile of near-weapons-grade highly enriched uranium — all 880 or so pounds of it — remains unaccounted for after being moved out of Tehran’s nuclear facilities ahead of anticipated American strikes. Making matters worse, the Trump administration lacks a realistic and credible diplomatic path toward any reasonable, stable endgame that serves American interests and constrains Iran’s nuclear program.

Indeed, Trump himself is the largest obstacle to such a path: he is an untrustworthy and mercurial interlocutor who constantly changes the outcomes he seeks, often overruling his own national security officials via flippant social media posts that declare policies opposed to those publicly articulated by his key advisors. As a result, it’s impossible to know what Trump really wants vis-à-vis Iran — indeed, there’s a good chance that Trump himself does not know what he wants beyond banner headlines and favorable coverage on Fox News — and therefore impossible for the United States to conduct actual diplomacy that might actually restrain (if not eliminate) Iran’s nuclear program. 

Nor does it take much sympathy for Iran’s brutal regime to understand why it might not take Trump’s diplomacy all that seriously. After all, Trump tore up the 2015 nuclear agreement for no good reason in his first term and then attempted to negotiate a return to the deal once back in office. Israel launched its air campaign against the regime just before another round of talks to that end with Trump’s diplomatic envoy were scheduled to begin in Oman. He subsequently attempted to claim credit for the Israeli action before intervening in the conflict with his own set of strikes against Iranian nuclear facilities—an attack top American officials later claimed was strictly limited before Trump indulged in idle speculation about the need for regime change. 

With this shifting set of goals and Trump’s ever-changing impulses, it’s difficult for Iran or any other interested party (such as the European Union or America’s Gulf partners) to put much stock in his administration’s diplomacy. Suppose the United States and Iran strike some sort of deal on Tehran’s nuclear program — what reason does Iran have to believe Trump will stick to it? A temporary accord may be possible, but such an agreement would not likely solve the problems posed by Iran’s nuclear program in any enduring way and may well be pursued by Iran as a way to open up space to recover and rebuild from the current Israeli and American air campaigns. 

Put another way, the path to open-ended conflict between Iran and the United States appears much clearer than the route to a negotiated agreement that constrains Iran’s nuclear program. Think the Iraq no-fly zones of the 1990s on steroids, or a larger version of Israel’s own “campaign between the wars” in Syria during that country’s civil war. At minimum, strikes against Iranian nuclear targets every few years may be needed to keep Tehran’s nuclear program in check — and they may not do the job well enough. Trump himself likely has no real appetite for such a long-term military commitment, but that’s the course his rash decisions and poor policy choices may have set for the United States in the Middle East. We can hope that diplomacy will resume and prove successful when it comes to Iran’s nuclear program, but there’s very little reason to believe that Trump and his national security team will be able to get it right.

As America ought to have learned by now, wars — whatever their shape and intensity — are easy to start, but hard to finish.